He was kind enough to respond, with the differences listed under three categories: Business model, vendor rating approach, and market traction and momentum. So I emailed Gorniak and asked him what distinguishes G2 Crowd from IT Central Station. (IT Central Station launched in September of last year, followed by G2 Crowd in February of this year.) When I took a look at IT Central Station, the similarities seemed startling-right down to their strategy to use LinkedIn as a login and vetting mechanism for reviewers.

The other company is IT Central Station, which appears at first glance to be a New York-based version of the Chicago-based G2 Crowd, founded just five months earlier. In a previous post, I wrote about my interview with Matt Gorniak, COO of G2 Crowd, which I described as a “startup aims to tap the potential of crowdsourcing and data analytics to turn the market research industry upside-down.” I also noted that it’s widely referred to as “the Yelp for business software.” I’ve since learned that, oddly enough, there’s another startup that aims to tap the potential of crowdsourcing and data analytics to turn the market research industry upside-down, and that is, wouldn’t you know, also widely referred to as the Yelp for business software.

Tech review sites